Exhibition

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A Drawing A Day

Ayka Go

August 24 - September 16, 2017

Gallery 2

What is the weight of an afternoon play in the garden? Of a morning of solitude in your room? The face of your playmate on top of a table? Of the dollhouse and dinosaurs, the pillows and birthday cakes? What is the weight of your childhood days?

In her first solo exhibition A Drawing a Day, Ayka Go turns inwards, towards the solitude and imagery of her youth. She employs the structure of a visual diary– an exercise many art students often go through– to utilize form, instead of words, as signifier for the everyday. Here is the private and the minutiae, the fantastical and whimsical imaginings ensconced in layers of domestic interiors. Even the few outdoor drawings, gleaned from days spent in gardens, seemed filtered through a complex and rich inner world. Plush, oversized sofas, thick draperies, and ornately printed wallpapers give way to lush layers of leaves and flowers; as if what was inside unfolded and bloomed to the external world. Faceless, enigmatic characters, conjured or otherwise, and culled from memories of play and interaction, are scattered about.

Working on her drawings from emotive sources, the artist barely made initial sketches, opting instead to draw as she remembers. The resulting compositions, while not entirely unplanned, were more instinctively created. The use of graphite, along with the scale of the drawings, is an intentional choice. With graphite, one can easily and readily apply marks. As with memories, one can easily and readily erase them as well. The scale suggests intimacy, while the sheer number reverberates with the constancy of everyday life.

To draw is to set apart an object or phenomena as significant, as worthy of observation and acknowledgement. In constantly mining her memories, Go continues a process of negotiation and acceptance with her past. The space of remembering becomes, in a way, a source of respite.

How does it weigh, all your childhood days? It weighs upon, it hangs above, it descends with ease.

– JC Rosette